One interesting American thing (a technical term, meaning a moment or event, a text, a controversy, an idea, a figure, or whatevertheheckelse I think of) per day, from Ben Railton, a professor of American literature, culture, history, and, natch, Studies.

MyAmericanFuture

MyAmericanFuture

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

August 13, 2014: Birthday Specials: 2011 Birthday Best

[For a week that
begins with my Dad’s birthday and ends with mine, I’ll share a series of posts
that engage with birthdays, both others’ and mine. Cel … ebrate AmericanStudier
birthdays, come on!]

In honor of this AmericanStudier’s
34th birthday in 2011, here (from oldest to most recent) were 34 of
my favorite posts from the blog’s first year:

3)The
Shaw Memorial: I’ll freely admit that my first handful of posts were also
just dedicated to texts and figures and moments and histories that I love—but
the Memorial, like Chesnutt’s novel and Thunderheart
in those first two links, is also a deeply inspiring work of American art.

5)Ely
Parker: The post in which I came up with my idea for Ben’s American Hall of
Inspiration; I know many of my posts can be pretty depressing, but hopefully
the Hall can be a way for me to keep coming back to Americans whose stories and
legacies are anything but.

8)The
Pledge of Allegiance: Another central purpose for this blog is to
complicate, and at times directly challenge and seek to change, some of our
most accepted national and historical narratives. This is one of the most
important such challenges.

9)Public
Enemy, N.W.A., and Rap: If you’re going to be an AmericanStudier, you have
to be willing to analyze even those media and genres on which you’re far from
an expert, and hopefully find interesting and valuable things to say in the
process.

10)Chinatown and the History of LA: At
the same time, the best AmericanStudiers likewise have to be able to analyze
their very favorite things (like this 1974 film, for me), and find ways to link
them to broader American narratives and histories.

11)The
Statue of Liberty: Our national narratives about Lady Liberty are at least
as ingrained as those about the Pledge of Allegiance—and just about as
inaccurate.

13)Dorothea
Dix and Mental Health Reform: When it comes to a number of the people on
whom I’ve focused here, I didn’t know nearly enough myself at the start of my
research—making the posts as valuable for me as I could hope them to be for any
other reader. This is one of those.

14)Ben
Franklin and Anti-Immigrant Sentiments: As with many dominant narratives,
those Americans who argue most loudy in favor of limiting immigration usually
do so in large part through false, or at best greatly oversimplified and
partial, versions of our past.

15)Divorce
in American History: Some of our narratives about the past and present seem
so obvious as to be beyond dispute: such as the idea that divorce has become
more common and more accepted in our contemporary society. Maybe, but as with
every topic I’ve discussed here, the reality is a good bit more complicated.

16)My
Mom’s Guest Post on Margaret Wise Brown: The first of the many great guest
posts I’ve been fortunate enough to feature here; I won’t link to the others,
as you can and should find them by clicking the “Guest Posts” category on the
right. And please—whether I’ve asked you specifically or not—feel free to
contribute your own guest post down the road!

18)Tribute
Post to Professor Alan Heimert: I’d say the same about the tribute posts
that I did for the guest posts—both that they exemplify how fortunate I’ve been
(in this case in the many amazing people and influences I’ve known) and that
you should read them all (at the “Tribute Posts” category on the right).

19)Martin
Luther King: How do we remember the real, hugely complicated, and to my
mind even more inspiring man, rather than the mythic ideal we’ve created of
him? A pretty key AmericanStudies question, one worth asking of every truly
inspiring American.

20)Angel
Island and Sui Sin Far’s “In the Land of the Free”: Immigration has been, I
believe, my first frequent theme here, perhaps because, as this post
illustrates, it can connect us so fully to so many of the darkest, richest,
most powerful and significant national places and events, texts and histories.

21)Dresden
and Slaughterhouse Five: One of
the events we Americans have worked most hard to forget, and one of the novels
that most beautifully and compelling argues for the need to remember and retell
every story.

22)Valentine’s
Day Lessons: Maybe my least analytical post, and also one of my favorites.
It ain’t all academic, y’know.

24)Peter
Gomes and Faith: A tribute to one of the most inspiring Americans I’ve ever
met, and some thoughts on the particularly complicated and important American
theme he embodies for me.

25)The
Treaty of Tripoli and the Founders on Church and State: Sometimes our
historical narratives are a lot more complicated than we think. And sometimes
they’re just a lot simpler. Sorry, David Barton and Glenn Beck, but there’s
literally no doubt of what the Founders felt about the separation of church and
state the idea of America as a “Christian nation.”

27)Du
Bois, Affirmative Action, and Obama: Donald Trump quickly and thoroughly
revealed himself to be a racist jackass, but the core reasons for much of the
opposition to affirmative action are both more widespread and more worth
responding to than Trump’s buffoonery.

29)Tribute
to My Grandfather Art Railton: The saddest Railton event of the year leads
me to reflect on the many inspiring qualities of my grandfather’s life,
identity, and especially perspective.

30)My
Clearest Immigration Post: Cutting through some of the complexities and
stating things as plainly as possible, in response to Sarah Palin’s historical
falsehoods. Repeated and renamed with even more force here.

31)Paul
Revere, Longfellow, and Wikipedia: Another Sarah Palin-inspired post, this
time on her revisions to the Paul Revere story and the question of what is
“common knowledge” and what purposes it serves in our communal conversations.

33)Abraham
Cahan: The many impressive genres and writings of this turn of the century
Jewish American, and why AmericanStudiers should work to push down boundaries
between disciplines as much as possible.

34)Terrorism,
Norway, and Rhetoric: One of the latest and most important iterations of my
using a current event to drive some American analyses—and likewise an
illustration of just how fully interconnected international and American events
and histories are.

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#NoConfederateSyllabus

In response to the controversy over HBO's proposed show Confederate, Matthew Teutsch and I have collaborated on #NoConfederateSyllabus, a Google Doc that you all can contribute to as well. Check out an intro here: